1.3 Because You Have a Civic Responsibility to Participate

Caring about state and local government is not only about how it affects you or how you can influence it. It is also about fulfilling your civic responsibility. Living in a democracy comes with rights, but it also comes with duties.

Civic responsibility refers to the duties individuals have to support the well-being of their political community. These duties include voting in elections, following fair laws, serving on juries, and contributing to the common good through community service or other forms of participation. Staying informed about public issues is also part of this responsibility, because informed citizens are better able to hold leaders accountable and make thoughtful decisions.

Benjamin Franklin famously remarked at the close of the Constitutional Convention that the delegates had created “a republic, if you can keep it.” His words remind us that maintaining a democracy requires constant awareness and active participation from its citizens.

When people choose not to participate, decisions are left to a smaller group, and the system becomes weaker.

In the next chapter, we will return to the idea of civic responsibility when discussing the framers of the Constitution, the leaders who wrote and established the U.S. Constitution.

Several believed the government they designed could only succeed if citizens stayed engaged. In other words, the structure of the system alone was not enough. Democracy requires people to take part in order to work as intended.